Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, nicknamed Sly Stallone (July 6, 1946-), is an American actor, director, producer, screenwriter and formerporn star. One of the biggest box office draws in the world from the 1970s to the 1990s, Stallone is an icon of machismo and Hollywood action heroism. He is by far one of the most iconic action heroes ever, alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. While not a very large man (standing at about 5'9), his Mr. Fanservice musculature is the result of hard work with weight training and nutritional supplements (such as HGH and testosterone). His identifiable "marble-mouth" voice is the result of complications during birth and having little feeling on one side of his body.

He has played two characters who have become a part of the American cultural lexicon: Rocky Balboa, the boxer who overcame odds to fight for love and glory, and John Rambo, a courageous soldier who specialized in violent rescue and revenge missions. And he has also been a driving force behind the camera for the majority of his movies, having written the original story for Rocky and directing most of the sequels.

During the 1980s and best part of 1990s, he was one of the biggest movie stars in the world with the Rocky and Rambo franchises. In the late 90's he started to struggle with a series of Box Office duds as he found that the public was slowly losing interest in the Stallone-style "Strictly Formula" films. He decided to go into more character-piece films where he was praised for expanding his range and acknowledging his advancing age.

Stallone's Rocky was inducted into the National Film Registry as well as having its film props placed in the Smithsonian Museum. Stallone's use of the front entrance to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in the Rocky series led the area to be nicknamed the Rocky Steps. Philadelphia has a statue of his Rocky character placed permanently near the museum, on the right side before the steps.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy